Just a few more minutes…

So I went for my follow up gastroscopy yesterday, which, for those that don’t know, entails sticking a tube with a camera on the end of it down your throat and presumably into the gut to see what is going on down there. My previous encounter with this procedure was to diagnose my gastric ulcer and this one was to see if it had healed. The good news is that it has healed and aside from a tiny scar I should be ulcer-free and able to eat anything (this is what the specialist said) I want.
Now I have never been under general anaesthetic before and the first time it was a rather nice feeling being put to sleep (I wonder if that is what its like when they give Death Row inmates the lethal injection), but even better coming round. When I woke up the first time I recall saying to the recovery nurse that she reminded me of my late mother, which is totally absurd as my mother was a 5ft 6 Asian woman and this nurse was a dyed-in-the-wool Aussie with a lovely bedside manner but actually reminded me of a cleaning lady rather than my dear mother. Suffice to say that after that initial comment, more drivel came out of my mouth, some of which I am to embarrassed to recall. No one told me that one of the side effects of being under a general is that when you wake up you say the first thing that comes into your head. Not the first sensible thing that comes into your head, but the first senseless thought that you can think of (or not as the case may be).
Second time around I wake up in the usual marijuana-induced stupor and I quickly think to myself: “Don’t say anything stupid.” Especially as it is the same nurse. So, with a few weeks of broken sleep under my belt from having a newborn, I figure I will wake up and my commando-like instinct will kick in and I will be able to refrain from saying something that I might regret. I end up sounding quite coherent and joke to the nurse that I would have liked to have stayed asleep for a few more hours now that we have a 6 week old baby. I look quickly at the nurse expecting a sympathetic smile, but all I get is a look to say: “Just another stoned patient talking out of his arse.”
So I feel quite confident that I have come out of this unscathed, and as I sit down to enjoy my tea and biscuits and some morning TV, out come a couple of other ‘out’ patients, who clearly are doing this for the first time. One of them sits down and tries to make some polite conversation with the other patient and myself and he ends up giggling to himself and commenting how 3 grown men are sitting in some slumber chairs watching an infomercial on the Aghhh Bra (which is the most comfortable cross-weave bra a woman can wear). Pitying the man for such an inane comment I reply by saying: “Yeah, that’s equality for you!”
He shoots, he scores.